63.88pc of Facebook users are female, according to a breakdown carried out by blogger Paul Francis, using the social networking site’s tool that helps advertisers target certain audiences.
While the US enjoys a fairly balanced ratio of 40pc male to 60pc female among its 18m users, a whopping 72.69pc of Ireland’s Facebook users are female, giving it an overwhelmingly higher female to male ratio.
Ireland is not alone with these numbers: Spain, New Zealand, the Netherlands, China and Mexico all had female users totalling 70pc or above.
It seems that this phenomenon is not just isolated to Facebook — girls like social networking sites more than boys, or so says US online marketing company RapLeaf, which found that 63pc of MySpace’s 11.2 million users are female and 58pc of Friendster users were also female.
Strangely, when it came to LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, the skew went the other way, with men aged between 18 and 45 making up 61pc of all users.
This survey threw up some more data, indicating that Facebook users are more mainstream and tend to have profiles on other social networking sites, while MySpace users tend to stick primarily with this site.
US cookie makers, Pepperidge Farm’s recent investment takes the biscuit. The company has just invested US$2-3m in a cookie-themed social networking site aimed at women, when it seems that all they had to do was put ads on any existing site such as Facebook.
By Marie Boran
